So. Things to love about Beijing in winter.
Part One: Hot Coke with Ginger, A Possibly Magical Elixir
Growing up, the only time soda was served in our house was when someone was sick. The soda was ginger ale. You had to be very sick to qualify for it. And as soon as you were better, any extra cans were returned not to a cabinet in the kitchen, but to a closet that functioned as a kind of hardware shed. There the ginger ale was wedged onto a shelf alongside a carton of candles, my grandfather’s toolbox and other items reserved strictly for emergencies. As long as everyone was healthy, the cans stayed on the shelf. Sometimes they aged there for years. Afterall, they weren’t just there to be enjoyed.
It’s possible this arrangement and the longings it generated might help account for my strong feelings about Beijing’s favorite sickbed pick-me-up. But I’ve checked with people who led less fructose-deprived childhoods. And they agree. Hot Coke with ginger is a magnificent beverage far far superior to its pale tepid American cousin. It’s so delicious in fact that it can make people (here’s where I got the back-up) feel wistful about flu season.
I know what you’re probably thinking. I was skeptical too. The first time a friend suggested heating up a can of Coke I suggested maybe he was the one who was sick. I was too weak to argue though so I watched him peel and mince up a few inches of ginger root and stir them into the fizzing brown liquid warming in a pot on the stove. The liquid hissed and foamed. He turned off the flame and immediately poured the contents of the pot into a mug. The cup fizzed some more and the ginger pieces obligingly floated to the surface.
My doubts vanished with the first whiff of sinus-tingling vapors. Something miraculous had occurred in the pot. (I’m no chemist, but I’m betting it has to do with the same properties of cola that allow it to dissolve pennies.) As the ginger and Coke commingled, the ginger flavor exploded, replacing the familiar taste of the soda with something exotically ambrosial. The liquid had thickened ever so slightly and just enough bubbles remained to gently scratch the back of an itchy throat. This drink was not just not wacko, it was genius.
The recipe is cola neutral. I use Coke because that’s what is most available in my neighborhood. In some parts of China, I’m told, people use Pepsi. In others all you can find is something called Feichang Kele or “Extremely Cola.” Extremely Cola is distributed in bottles and cans whose red labels and slanting white script bear a probably actionable resemblance to a certain American brand. I haven’t tested out its ginger-absorbing properties, but it probably works just as well as the real thing. An ordinary-sized ginger lobe will suffice, but as far as I can tell, no amount of ginger is too much. Eating the sticky brown bits with a spoon out of a drained cup is not a pleasure on which one wants to skimp.
According to Mr. Ti, the TIME Beijing bureau’s longtime driver and authority on Chinese culinary conventions, before soda was widely available in China people made the beverage with brown sugar water. Generally speaking, Mr. Ti is a traditionalist. But he approves of Coca Cola–he sips it through long straws he pre-chills in the bureau refrigerator–and on this matter he is firmly behind innovation. “I could never go back to brown sugar,” he confided last winter as he handed me a steaming fizzing mug.
By this point, hot Coke with ginger had long been a special thing with us. The first time Mr. Ti saw me chopping up ginger and coughing in the bureau kitchen, I saw a new side of Mr. Ti. Ordinarily his demeanor occupies a spectrum that ranges from matter-of-fact to taciturn. But at that moment he was neither. “You have a cold don’t you?” he asked hovering over my shoulder and bouncing slightly. The tone in which he asked the question was oddly congratulatory. “You’re making Coke with ginger aren’t you?” I nodded. Mr. Ti beamed. “Allow me” he said and shooed me out of the kitchen. I returned to my desk. A few minutes later Mr. Ti appeared in my doorway, still grinning. He was a holding a matching cup and saucer and he placed them, with a courtly flourish, on my desk. There was doily in between the cup and the saucer. Mr. Ti is not a doily kind of guy.
He stood in the doorway long enough to watch me take my first sip. “You like to drink this,” he declared almost to himself as much as me. “It’s a good drink.” Ten minutes later he came back with a fresh mug. I didn’t get much sleep that night (hot Coke with ginger’s one small flaw is that it must be consumed in moderation), but I already felt much much better.
From then on, whenever I’ve had a cold, the special Mr. Ti has materialized with cup in hand. I’m sure neither of us would say that we exactly look forward to my getting a cold. But I think I speak for both of us when I say we don’t mind it too much either.
Susan Jakes